19 January 2014BIG MOUNTAIN ("MOUNTAIN GOAT SPECIAL")Some familiar faces joined us this week for VTH3 run #612 on Big Mountain – yet another “torture trail” by arguably the most aptly-named Hasher of all time: Mountain Goat!Off we went along Le Ngoc Han to Hem 89 and then up the stairs through the houses to Vi Ba.Right turn and all the way to the end before turning left into Hem 14.From there, it was an even longer hike to Hem 105 off Le Loi until we made another left turn near the end that took us through several lanes to the base of Big Mountain.All that way and we hadn’t started climbing yet!But that soon changed into a very steep climb up some rocky steps that led to a trail which wound around the mountainside.The trail was also very difficult and steep in places, and it led our 21 intrepid Hashers through several different types of vegetation and undulating terrain before finally emerging at a temple on Vi Ba (the mostly sealed road that winds around the mountain from top to bottom).With that challenging trek behind us, we headed back down the mountainside and past Offshore Bar 1 to the twin goldfish in the Front Beach park on Le Loi, where we tucked into an excellent repast supplied once again by Mountain Goat, duly washed down by the contents of many gold and silver bullets courtesy of our valued sponsor San Miguel. It's surely fair to say that healthy exercise leads to an extremely healthy appetite!The Circle was called and this latest in Mountain Goat’s repertoire of testing trails was given an excellent score of 9/10 by CNR – himself a Hare of some renown, who is not known for awarding points unless they’re well-deserved!VTH3 Hash Virgin Vesa was introduced as a friend and compatriot of 'flying Finn' Pekka.Then returnees Tiny Tim, Terminator and Mother Theresa were welcomed back to the fold (along with a furry new chum for K9-extraordinaire Hashputin, perhaps?).And just to prove we still haven’t run out of new and innovative ways to go up, over, across and down Big Mountain, next week’s trail will also be set on the Vung Tau icon by Hares Falcon and CNR.